Posts Tagged ‘weather’

The snow is finally starting to melt. I can see the deck and roof outside again. The familiar Vancouver puddle is returning, and not a minute too soon.

I’m not a winter person, as you’ve probably figured. The fact that California and Arizona are on the wrong side of the border is nothing short of a travesty of international justice. I’m still waiting for our government to take action at The Hague.

Sure, winter snow is great for the skiers and boarders, but I’m not one of them. Besides, there’s still plenty of snow on the mountains over on the north shore. At least, I assume there is behind that low cloud cover obscuring the view of the top half of the mountains.

The season has its benefits, of course. I love hockey enough to endure the kind of abuse I took from some idiot on the Skytrain yesterday for wearing my Canucks toque after they lost again, continuing their current bad stretch. But, if I’d wanted a ‘Canadian’ winter I’d have moved to the prairies. Prairie people know what I’m talking about because half of them are here. Every other person you meet in Vancouver is a climate refugee from Alberta, Saskatchewan, or, occasionally, Manitoba.

It’s only the end of January, and we’ve already had more snow on the ground down here near sea level than we usually get in an entire winter. Several days of snow cover and freezing temperatures is just not natural here. I know we have it easy compared to everywhere else in the country – except Victoria, maybe – but I still expect the worst precipitation induced obstacle I encounter to be a puddle. Damn you, El Nino! Or is it Nina?

Normally, I say I could do without the rain and puddles but, after the cold spell of the past week or so, they now seem pretty palatable.

So, the world is in crisis. A global market meltdown has stocks tumbling on exchanges all around the world, like dominoes. Obscene amounts of money have simply evaporated. There is talk of recession in the U.S. So what?

The sun was out in Vancouver in the middle of winter, yesterday. In this, the week including what is supposedly the most depressing day of the year, it shone gloriously and gregariously on us, permeating everything, penetrating even the most sullen eyes in an orgy of retinal stimulation. It had to be enjoyed.

Coming out of a seminar, I had a couple of hours to kill. Under a cloudless sky, I walked through downtown. I decided to walk past the construction site of the new tallest building in the city, to take a look. Did I need to? Had I never seen a highrise under construction? Of course not. Vancouver is a forest of construction cranes.

Then I decided to look for a coffee and wandered a bit, before remembering I had no cash. That required a detour to the bank and it’s cash machine. A direction to go in for a while. Sights and sounds. Girl in extremely short skirt and high boots. Those legs must be cold.

Cashed up, I casually meandered in the direction of a coffee shop, looking in some shop windows and bars along the way. When I reached the coffee shop, I looked in the window and found all the comfortable chairs were taken. An excuse to keep walking.

At the corner of Granville and Drake, facing the open space over the bridge, the sun was blinding. I had to avert my eyes, it was so good. Crossing Granville Bridge, I could see Mount Baker, in Washington state. Another country! Miles and miles away! Visibility was fantastic. I looked down at the boats below, over at Bowen Island and the mountains on the far side of Howe Sound. A decadent feast for the eyes.

Cold? What cold? I didn’t want to be anywhere but outside, in the sun. The crisis would either solve itself or still be there tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s here, now, and there’s frost on the roof outside. The puddle off to the right is frozen. Cold, by local standards, but there’s not a cloud in the sky over the north shore mountains. I might just take another walk today. The crisis will still be there tomorrow.

Another wind storm tore through the city yesterday and into the night. They seem to be happening more often than usual. I don’t recall the weather being as windy as it has been lately, in general, let alone the kinds of storms we’ve experienced over the past year or two.

It was about a year ago that the wind devastated Stanley Park, blowing down thousands of trees and causing a landslide that closed the seawall. Then, in September, just after the seawall finally reopened, there was another one that closed it again. I wonder what the damage is this time…

Downtown, Georgia Street was actually closed at rush hour because a window pane was flapping around in the wind on an office tower. A couple sheets of plywood were blown off a highrise under constructon and landed on cars below – one of them occupied. People trying to get home to the north shore had serious problems, since Georgia Street leads to the causeway through Stanley Park that leads to Lions Gate Bridge.

My own inconvenience was limited to the incessant flapping of the plastic sheet that was tied down over my bicycle where it’s locked to the railing on the deck outside my window. This was my ingenious design to allow me to store the bike outside the apartment this winter, rather than inside like last winter. A great space saver. I guess a couple of the strings broke. I try to help the environment with pedal power and what does it give me in return? It’s a good thing the whole thing didn’t break free or who knows where it could have gone or what kind of damage might have resulted. Can you imagine a big sheet of plastic landing on your windshield while you’re driving?

Something like that happened to me once years ago in London – on my MOTORCYCLE. But it wasn’t even clear plastic. There I was just riding along and, suddenly, THWAP! Where is everything? Where did this plastic bag come from? Fortunately I managed to pull it off before anything else happened.

Oh, there was another noise that I heard last night. I heard something falling on the deck. That’s not unusual – things fall off the balcony above me every once in a while. I went outside this morning to see what it was. This one was a little unusual. It was a table leg. I wonder where the rest of it ended up…